


Small Things

by Raivana



Category: Awaken the Stars Series - Jer Keene
Genre: And More Angst, Angst, Discussion of past violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Abuse, Medical Procedures, Mind Control, Poorly written mental health issues, Psychology, and other nasty things implied by the novel, family bonds, how the heck does one tag, like tagging how does tagging happen, or anything else really, past and discussion of, poorly written health issues in general, recovery from above listed things, the author does not know what she's talking about and will likely mess it up, the author has no really knowledge of the military, the department head was a very bad person, um
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-02-03 21:14:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12756321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raivana/pseuds/Raivana
Summary: Jasper knew he was really sick, okay. He did!… most of the time. He was trying though! Really! He was!… most of the time. It was hard okay! Some days… some days you just had to burry your head under your pillow and pretend the rude doctor who couldn’t be bothered to introduce himself didn’t exist. That was a perfect plan thankyouverymuch.“Jasper.”That was Rex. And that was Kai shooing Doctor Rude out the door. That wasn’t really bad but Rex and Kai tended to bring Reason with them. Jasper didn’t want Reason. Jasper wanted to stay buried in his bedding until the end of days.Turning Jasper and the other double-dosed specialists back into semi-functional human beings is far from an easy task when their bodies and minds are dangerously unstable on a good day and half their fellow patients have already kicked the bucket due to varying complications. That doesn’t mean Euan, Rex, and the rest of the Whetū clan are going to stop trying.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flamethrower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I do not know what she’s talking about. I also don’t know how current situation came about only what it is. I have no idea how we got to this point but this is where we are. So, anything that is supposed to have happened between the end of Ashlesha will be extremely vague. See tags for more information of what I know nothing about. (like tagging. I do not know how to tag). I have never posted on AO3 before; if some bit of formatting is wonky please tell me how to fix it.
> 
> There will likely be more parts of this Thing, unless I terrify myself and go live under a rock forever. The other parts of The Thing will likely be shorter. There are three more pieces of The Thing that are written or being written.

 

 

Small Things

Chapter One: Small Things

 

Jasper knew he was really sick, okay. He did!… most of the time. He was trying though! Really! He was!… most of the time. It was hard okay! Some days… some days you just had to burry your head under your pillow and pretend the rude doctor who couldn’t be bothered to introduce himself didn’t exist. That was a perfect plan thankyouverymuch.

“Jasper.”

Oh, shit. That was Rex. And that was Kai shooing Doctor Rude out the door. That wasn’t really _bad_ but Rex and Kai tended to bring Reason with them. Jasper didn’t want Reason. Jasper wanted to stay buried in his bedding until the end of days.

“Jas—”

“No,” there was a light tug on his pillow but Jasper only gripped it tighter, “don’t wanna.”

Hand on his shoulder. “C’mon. You’ve got meds to take.”

“Make me.”

The hand tightened its grip. “We don’t want to do that, Jasper, but we will if we have to. You know that. _You_ are also the one who wanted to deal with fewer needles. That can’t be done unless you take your meds voluntarily.” 

Dammit. Damn Reason to Hell and back. And dammit _why was the heart rate monitor suddenly screeching at him_? Because he’d worked himself halfway into a panic attack is why. Dammit!

“Easy Jas.” The grip on his shoulder turned into a hand rubbing circles. “It’s alright. How about you tell us why you’re trying to smother yourself with your pillow?”

That whiplashed angry panic straight into mortification. “’s too bright.”

There was a disappointed sigh. “You remember what you’re supposed do when anything’s too much?”

Jasper hated, _hated_ , that that was a serious question. That it _had_ to be a serious question because his memory was shoddy at _best_. He’d remembered though. He did! He just hadn’t been able to work his brain through the process of _doing_ it. He tried to smoosh himself deeper between his mattress and pillow. “Supposed to tell someone.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because… because… Because because!” That made sense right?

“Alright, here’s the deal. We’ve got your eye-mask here and the lights dimmed. We get your eyes covered, and we get you through your meds, fluids, and nutrient goop. Then you can burrow yourself back under your pillow. Sound like a plan?”

Damn Reason. It sounded so _simple_ when Rex said it. (He thought that was Rex anyway.) It wasn’t! Was it? Damn now his head hurt for non-bright reasons. Why did thinking have to hurt so much? You don’t have to think, he told himself. You just have to do what you’re told. It was a potentially dangerous mindset but sometimes it was all he had.

“Jasper? Alright?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Jasper squeezed his eyes shut as tight as he could and loosened the death grip on his pillow. “Okay.” 

It was still too bright as Kai pulled the pillow away and Rex helped him sit up. A dark burgundy that burned behind his eyes and made him think of blood, gunshots, and clouds of drywall dust. It lingered there even after the heavy cloth was secured over his eyes. It took the tickle-hum of the back of the bed rising and hands setting him back against it for his breathing and heart rate to settle back down because nonopeandno.

“Jasper?”

Jasper pulled a sharp breath through his teeth. “I’m okay,” breathe. “I am.” The blindfold really did help. Sometimes it felt like that nice scrap of cloth was the only thing holding the broken pieces of his skull together and stopping the mush that used to be his brain from leaking out and making a horrible mess. It was already an internal mess. It didn’t need to be an outside one too. “Just give me my stupid drugs.”

Rex helps him take his stupid drugs while Kai and someone else fiddled around with medical junk in the background. Jasper thought Rex was better at helping than a lot of the actual staff. If only because Rex understood his stubborn need to do as much for himself as he could at any given time, even if it was only drinking down the stupid pills. It took a few tries to get some of them down. Tricky little bastards.

He was just about finished swapping between gross nutrient goop and not gross juice when one of them gently turned his arm over and started rubbing it with disinfectant. He tried to jerk his arm away and nearly spilled the juice cup in his other hand. “Hey! I thought no needles!”

The hand kept its firm grip. “Fewer isn’t none, Jasper.” Dammit Reason. Jasper tried to relax. He did! Really! But he could only sharply shake his head when asked “Can you keep your arm still?”

The part of him that would never cease to scream and rage at being tied down was at constant war with the part of him that screamed that the restraints were _necessary_ ; that he would hurt someone if he wasn’t restrained and he didn’t want to hurt anybody (most of the time). Knowing it was necessary didn’t stop it from feeling like his bones were trying to claw their way out of his skin when they secured the cuff on his wrist to the strap across with bed because _his bones were trying crawl out of his skin_. It was necessary, it was necessary, and he’d be even more freaked out if he _wasn’t_ restrained because if he wasn’t restrained he could hurt somebody and he didn’t want to hurt anybody.

“You’re doing well, Jas.” That voice was familiar but it wasn’t Rex or Kai. Jasper immediately decided that he didn’t know who it was and was too out of it to try and identify it farther. No matter what the stupid twitch in his head said there was nothing else to rage about. Nope and no.

“Shut up.” He knocked back the rest of his stupid juice in one go and threw the stupid cup across the room. There was a heavy pause while everyone, Jasper included, tried to figure out if there was going to be more violence. He was going to stop thinking about violence before it started sounding like a good idea.

Somebody laughed. “If I try to get you to drink the rest of this goop are you going to throw it too?”

“Noooo.” He was going to dump it on his arm and make Kai start cleaning all over again.

“Hmm. I don’t think that was a ‘I’m going to be a good boy and drink my goop’ no.”

Jasper intended to cross his arms and give his best I’m-a-good-boy-how-could-you-doubt-me pout but his retrained wrist caught and for a few moments the world cracked sideways. All he could process was _tieddownrestraineddangerthreatthreatthreat._

When he was capable of more than involuntary reactions to _threatdangerthreat_ both his wrists were strapped down and someone was trying to do the same to his ankles. He aimed kick at them because why not before he let them attach the cuffs around his ankles to the strap at the end of the bed. Jasper really, really, didn’t want to really hurt the people who were trying to help him. And he knew they were trying to help… most of the time. That didn’t mean it was easy for him to just passively let them strap him down and _ohshitfuckdamn_ his mouth tasted like blood. He groaned and let them push his shoulders back against the bed, which was now almost fully reclined.

“Jasper?”

“Who’d I bite?” He hated biting people. After the fact at least. He usually greatly enjoyed it during the act and tended to be quite pleased with himself immediately afterward. He was still pretty pleased that he bit The Liar though (and would likely do so again if ever given the opportunity.) 

“Just your own lip, Jas. Here.” Someone carefully tilted his chin and dabbed his lip with a disinfectant wipe. Carefully, because he might decide biting was a brilliant idea at any moment. Jasper immediately negated the disinfectant by reflexively licking his lip. 

The hands on his shoulders squeezed. They weren’t restraining but they didn’t manage comforting either. “We need to secure your shoulders, Jas.” Because he couldn’t be jerking around with a needle in his arm. It hurt. So he nodded and let them.

The harness that held him down was almost like wearing a backpack. It was a single strap that sat across the back of his neck, looped under his arms like backpack straps before looping back under the strap across his neck. The strap connecting the harness to the bed-frame could be lengthened or shortened depending on how much freedom of movement it was safe to give him. The whole restraint system was designed like that. As much freedom as was safe for everyone. (It was far more than Jasper thought he deserved. They should’ve tied him down and let his overburdened, overstressed, overstimulated nervous system kill him. But they didn’t.)

“What happened?” He asked before his head could spin too much.

Kai was prepping his arm again. “You had a strange combination of a panic attack and a seizure. It was mildly terrifying.”

“Sorry.”

“How many times are we going to have to keep telling you to quit apologizing for the program fucking up your brain?”

“Lots. Probably lots.” And there was needle number one. Ouch. Rex, he thought, it was usually Rex, gave him bunched up wads of his blankets to squeeze. “How many needles?”

“Just two. I can make it three and give you a nice painkiller for your head. It’ll make you a little drowsy and loopy though.”

“ _Please_.” He’d take an extra needle and painkiller stoned over migraine puke anyway. Needles themselves weren’t really a problem anyway. The reason he didn’t like them had more to do with his desire to be an active participant in his own treatment. Considering his motor skills were shot to hell, he couldn’t give himself his own injections. Plus giving him something sharp, pointy, and stabby that he could stab people with was a reeeeally bad idea. Like really, really bad.

The last needle, the IV line, however was less than comfortable. The fluid was cold and thick and left him feeling like his blood was made of sewer sludge for hours afterward. (Or maybe minutes. His sense of time was pretty fucked up.) At least it didn’t hurt like it used to. It was awful, nasty, necessary shit that prevented him from turning into a real life dementor. He might not remember the airport disaster very well (liar) but that didn’t mean— no, no, nope, and no. He was not thinking about it. He. Was. Not.

“Alright Jasper? You’re shaking.”

“Cold.” It wasn’t a lie. He was fucking cold and the fucking IV bag was filling his veins with sludge but that wasn’t the main reason. And the others always knew when he was lying by omission. Whether or not they indulge or push him varies and he couldn’t figure out what made them push and what they’d let lie. He’d really, really like to not have to make words right now.

“You’ve got a mild fever.”

“I do?”

“By a degree and a half.”

“Oh. Can I uh…” Thing that you wrap around you to keep warm. He was currently twisting one in his hands. “Blankets!” Before he even managed to get the word out, people were swathing him in as many blankets as possible without disrupting the IV line. This was acceptable.

“I’m going to need to give you a fluid line if you’re going to keep throwing cups. It’s hard enough to keep you hydrated on a good day.”

“ ’s fine.” Drinking and throwing both required being unburied from his blankets and that was no. “Can I have my other hand back?” He wanted to snuggle his blankets.

“When we’re done with the IVs. I’d rather not risk having you yank it if your brain convinces you it’s a venomous snake again.”

“That only happened…” Oh shit was this embarrassing, “a few times…”

“Six times. Specifically a coral cobra, a water cobra, a Mexican jumping viper, a hognosed pit viper, a golden lancehead, and a burrowing asp, which you were insistent was trying to burrow into your arm and live there and eat you from the inside out. Med school doesn’t really teach you what to do when your patient is intent on defending you from their venomous IV drip.”

Jasper never wanted to hide under the bed more. The heat from his face probably could’ve risen his fever by several degrees. That… that was… fuck. He remembered that; trying to dig a snake out of his arm. It was a really weird sideways memory. Of course it was weird. He thought his IV was a snake trying to burrow into his arm and eat him.

He also remembered blinking and the bundle of tubing in Kai’s arms turning into a writhing mass of angry gold snakes. That had been an… interesting moment. It had made perfect sense that Those Doctors from Before would smuggle in highly venomous snakes under some sort of illusion to hurt Kai and of _course_ They use a highly endangered species to do it because Evil. He remembered insisting that they not kill the snakes. That they had to take them back to their Snake Island and it wasn’t their fault They tried to use them was murder weapons.

All and all, it was better than thinking about Those Doctors pinning him down and sinking snake fangs into his arm.

Really, it was all Kai’s fault that the first thing he thought when there was a sharp stab in his arm was “Snake!”

Given the stifled chuckling surrounding him, that was another thing on a long list of things he didn’t mean to say out loud but he said out loud anyway.

“It’s his fault!” Jasper insisted. “If he hadn’t put snakes in my head then they wouldn’t’ve bit me!” 

That was obviously the wrong thing to say because they only laughed harder.

“I’m going to translate that as ‘If he hadn’t mentioned snakes, I wouldn’t have thought of them when he stuck me with a needle.’”

“Yes!” They kept laughing. Jasper did his best to melt into his mattress while being effectively immobile. Since that was a miserable failure, he settled for sulking. “Fine. Laugh at my poor fucked up brain. See if I care.”

That was also obviously the wrong thing to say because everyone stopped laughing immediately and the air suddenly felt heavy. “What—”

“We’re sorry, Jas. It’s not— We really shouldn’t be laughing at you.”

“It’s fine. Really! It’s just—” Frustration built as he sputtered but words decided they didn’t want to exist. He wished they could poke at each other like they used to but he couldn’t find a way to make that thought into words that made sense.

“It’s okay, Jas.” One of them was petting his hair. It was nice. “It’s okay.”

It really, really wasn’t but it was nice to hear anyway. The hand kept running through his hair and Jasper kept carefully not thinking about who it belonged to. Rex and Kai were talking about him. He listened, it was his brain they were talking about anyway, even if it was basically static to him. His head didn’t hurt so much and he was content to listen and drowse until his brain and mouth remembered what words were.

 

-break-

 

Euan looked like he was going to cry as he ran his fingers through Jasper’s hair and Rex wanted nothing more than to kill some motherfuckers all over again and grind their bones to dust. Well, no, that wasn’t quite true. What he _really_ wanted was to not have to keep Jasper strapped down to a bed but turning Stroud into six kinds of compost would feel pretty damn good.

Kai just looked murderous as he glared at some machine’s readout screen. Then again, that tended to be Kai’s default expression when dealing with the department’s left over medical staff; like the asshole doctor who’d decided that Jasper was his business today and refused to listen to Jasper’s on shift nurse or security officer, so they’d called Kai. Doctor Asshole was not pleased. Kai was murderous, especially considering Jasper’s obvious distress. Asshole had supposed seniority but Kai had backup; backup that was very good at glaring assholes with over-inflated superiority complexes into submission.

A number of the head doctors were only helping to avoid spending the rest of their lives in a military prison and need the fear of God or Django Whetū put into them on a regular basis to keep them in line, so murderous is often Rex’s mood when dealing with them as well. The nurses and orderlies tended to be easier to deal with and watching tiny Nurse Joy ripping into her former superiors was always pretty fun.

Attempting to coax more conversation out of Jasper proved fruitless. The frustrated sputtering that petered out into agitated silence spoke more of an inability to talk rather than refusal and after he’d settled down Rex wasn’t sure he was even aware they were talking to him. It was an aggravating situation all around because they’d yet to figure out _why_ Jasper’s brain occasionally decided words weren’t a thing. All of the double-dosed specialists struggled with speech and communication but so far Jasper was the only one to lose his entire vocabulary for minutes to days at a time.

That Jasper was currently both conscious, mostly aware, and not reacting violently to Euan’s presence was a miracle. The last time Euan was in the room with Jasper conscious, Jasper flew into a vicious rage, struggling against his restraints and ranting about treason and betrayal until a violent seizure knocked him out. Rex couldn’t say what it was like to have your kid brother brainwashed to kill you but—

Ah, fuck it. Yes he did. Somewhere along the line Jasper had wormed his way into the small clump of people Rex called family. Sneaky little brat. At least Rex had the benefit of being able to regularly interact with Jasper without causing meltdowns. (Excluding days when Jasper was absolutely certain everything was Rex’s fault.)

Rex dragged a chair next to where Euan sat on Jasper’s bed, close enough to bump their knees together. He gave Rex a week smile before turning back to Jasper. “He’s doing well,” Rex said, “if a bit bored out of his skull. He’s made so many Pokemon jokes Nurse Joy is threatening to dye her hair bright pink. Really, it’s our own fault for assigning him a nurse named Joy and a security officer named Jenny on the same shift.” Euan nodded and grinned. That had been the reaction Rex was hoping for. It had be a very entertaining introduction to watch, even though they’d both had to watch from the observation room. Jasper had asked if they were serious six times and then laughed hysterically.It had been the first Jasper had laughed since this whole mess began.

“Getting his therapies and rehabilitation started will help a lot with that.” Kai rolled over on a stool while scowling at a clipboard. “The restraints might limit the physical therapies we can do but we can definitely start on fine motor skills and cognitive rehabilitation. I know being able to feed himself actual food with actual utensils would be a hell of a moral boost.”

“We could get him some kinetic sand,” Rex suggested. “Building and sculpting with it could help both those things.”

“He hates sand.” Euan whispered. The corner of his mouth twitched with remembered laughter. “Says it’s rough, irritating, and gets everywhere.”

“There’s different kinds with different textures.” Kai said with a thoughtful look. “Ones that feel more like dough or flour—”

“Oh my god. Flour. He’d throw it at us. He’d start a flour war. He’d give it such convoluted rules that he would be the only possible winner. It’d be a disaster and he’d be laughing the whole time.” Euan grinned. “We should totally do it.”

Rex agreed. Jasper laughing would totally worth the mess but Kai axed the idea immediately. “No fucking way. You all are _not_ going to start a flour war in a room full of sensitive medical equipment.”

Dang. It sounded like a blast. “Guess we’ll stick to dough then.”

“Floof.”

“Floof?” They looked at each other and then down at Jasper, who was butting his head against Euan’s stilled hand like an unhappy kitten until it started petting him again. “Floof?”

“Floof!” Jasper sounded greatly pleased himself; possibly because he could talk again, even if it was a nonsense word but then he added, “Get me some floof.”

“Floof.” Kai repeated. “Alright. What is floof.”

“’s like modeling dough stuff but…” He tugged at the restraints a bit when they prevented him from gesturing like he wanted to but didn’t panic again. “It doesn’t dry out and it’s supposed to be really light and fluffy so it won’t damage anything when I throw it.”

“When not if? Are we operating under the assumption you’re going to throw anything we give you?”

“Seems like a good idea to me.”

“Probably.” Kai rubbed his temples. “Okay floof. We’ll need something stiffer too. And maybe a therapy putty.”

“I saw putty with googly eyes in a shop once. Can I get some of that? I want to make little google-eyed putty monsters.”

“When I have fewer reasons to worry about you swallowing little plastic things and choking yourself.”

Jasper pouted but otherwise didn’t complain. “Nurse Joy said we were getting tvs soon. Are we?”

“It’s true. We’ll have to filter content obviously but should help with boredom. Is there anything you want? We can start approving things now.”

“Blue’s Clues.”

“Blue’s Clues?” Kai raised an eyebrow and gave Rex and Euan his incredulous look since Jasper couldn’t see it anyway. Well, it likely wouldn’t have bright flashing lights or gunshot sounds.

“Uh huh.” Jasper looked pleased again instead of pouty. “It’s about teaching about thinking and stuff like that, yeah? And I have issues with that. Thinking I mean.”

Kai frowned and looked thoughtful. “Some of the others have been using learning toys in their therapies. Educational programing would be beneficial for the same reasons.”

“Jesse’s been enthusiastic about their Leapser. They’ve been demanding everyone get one.”

“How come _I_ haven’t got one?”

“We’re working under the assumption you’ll throw everything across the room. Remember?”

“Fuck you.”

“Don’t worry, Jas. We’ll find you some less breakable toys.”

“And I’m going to fucking throw them at you.”

“We’re well aware. Now, quit pouting. I’m about to free you from the snakes.” Jaspers face went from petulant to baffled and then through six shades of red to a combination of all of the above as Kai and Joy took care of the IV lines.

They adjusted Jaspers restraints, lengthening the straps connecting his wrist and ankle cuffs to the bed and releasing his shoulders. Jasper used the slack to roll onto his side and burrow into a blanket nest with Kai’s help.

Euan pulled back, perhaps not wanting to push the miracle that let him stay by Jasper’s side any farther but Jasper grabbed his hand and put it back in his hair all but purring when petting resumed. “You are a cat,” Euan whispered. “A demanding little fluffy kitten.”

“Shut up.” The words slurred as if Jasper were talking in his sleep. “’s harder to not recognizeyou when you’re talkin.’”

Rex thought it be a good idea to pretend this conversation was normal. “Totally a purring kitten.”

“Maow” It was easy to pretend, with the restraints hidden under blankets, that Jasper was just sick with something normal, like a nasty strain of the flu and a migraine. 

But it wasn’t true. Their little brother was strapped to a bed for very good reasons. Like bouts of psychosis, regularly of the homicidal variety, and violent night terrors that attempted to murder orderlies without Jasper even waking up. Brain and nerve damage made everything a challenge and some days that alone could incite violence ranging from stubborn resistance and throwing cups to attempting to seriously hurt himself or anyone he could reach. That was just from the double-dose of the department’s shit too. Add in having several clips worth of ammunition unloaded into his chest and throat and you got a whole other mess.

“The Magic School Bus.”

“Huh?”

“Tv shows. The Magic School Bus.”

That was a conversation from a good ten minutes ago with a great deal of other stimuli in between. That was usually too far back for Jasper to draw from without specific prompting. That was good. “Any other brilliant ideas?”

“Reading Rainbow… Too Cute!”

“Too… Cute?”

“‘ _The following program contains material that it too cute. Viewer discretion is advised.’_ It’s about puppies and kittens and soft cute things.”

“You watch a show about cute kittens and puppies?”

Jasper turned red again. “Ziba likes it. And fluffy soft things are good stress relief, okay. Fluffy soft things make everything better.”

That was true. Unfortunately, they couldn’t bring in therapy animals around violent patients so, videos and fluffy toys would have to do. “We’ll have to make sure to get you some of that then.” Rex said. “You’ve been separated from your fellow kittens for quite some time. It’s understandable that you would miss them.”

“Maow.” Jasper stuck his tongue out at Rex before burrowing deeper into his blankets. “Done talking now. Sleepy. Hurt too much to earlier.”

“You can ask for help when you’re hurting Jasper.”

“Shuh-up. Sleeping.” Jasper capped the statement off with a less than convincing fake snore that led the others into equally convincing not-giggles.

“Sure Jas.” Rex had to grin when the only answer was another fake snore. Without Jasper to pester into revealing more about his health than he knew Rex asked Kai. “How is he? Really.”

“Well, yesterday he was screaming at us for treating him like a child and today he’s suggesting watching children’s shows. I’m not sure whether that’s progress or setback.”

“Call it progress.” Nurse Joy said. She’d commandeered Jasper’s bed tray to work with a tablet and clipboard while perched on a side-table. “I’d say yesterday and previous days’ responses were recognizing his cognitive impairment and being furious about it and today is recognizing his cognitive impairment and trying to do something about it.”

“Write that down. Looking for improvement is defiantly progress over sulking.”

“Already did, Doc.” Euan chose that moment to attempt to withdraw his hand again. Jasper snatched it back with swiftness beyond what he was usually capable of. “Been writing that down too. Don’t expect the sulking to change too much though. Unhappy kitten really is the best way to describe his general stable temperament.”

Euan smothered his giggles in his free hand and Rex had to bite his lip. “Some things don’t change.” Yeah, that was Jasper. An angry little kitten. However, he was a well trained, dangerous angry kitten with limited sanity. A well trained, dangerous kitten who was sleepily purring under the touch of someone whose eyes he usually attempted to claw out.

“I think he’s asleep.” Euan whispered. Jasper’s lack of response gave the statement credibility but then Nurse Joy said,

“Actually asleep or pretending to be so he can eavesdrop on us?”

“He’s been doing that?”

“They all have,” Kai said, “once they realized there were members of the staff who would withhold information or outright lie to them.”

“The assholes _hate_ it.” Joy added. “The rest of us are encouraging their applied critical thinking.”

Kai grinned. “Of course we’re encouraging critical thinking. It’s going better than encouraging the assholes not to be assholes.”

“Are the assholes causing problems?”

“Not as many since you and Dad started turning up at random to scowl.”

“Glad to be of service.” Euan smiled. He took his hand back. Jasper didn’t react. Not even a sleepy mumble, proving that he was, indeed, asleep. “There’s not much else I can do.”

“Oi!” Rex kicked his idiot fiancé in the shin. “You help. You help _a lot_. Just because you can’t directly help Jasper as much as you wish you could doesn’t change how much you _have_ done. For the others _and_ for him.”

Euan scowled down at his knees. Kai scowled at him. “Am I going to have to kick you too? Oh! Better idea. I’ll have you go sit with Jesse for a bit and let them fanboy over you.”

“Jesse?” Raised eyebrow. “ _Fanboy_? _ME?_ ”

“Jesse. Fanboy. You. You’re a national hero. Plus you personally restarted their heart. Twice. There’s a great deal of hero worship floating around. Deal with it.”

Euan dropped his face into his hands. “Hero worship.”

“National hero bit aside, all of the patients have seen or heard you verbally castrate the program doctors at least once—”

“The fuckers deserve it.”

“No one’s saying they don’t.”

“—AND,” Kai glared at them with a silent dare to interrupt again, “you’ve been one of the loudest voices speaking for them when they can’t do it themselves and, unless they’ve completely ditched reality for the day, they bloody well know it.”

Euan stared at them for several moments; his mouth opening and closing without sound.

“That’s it. Up you get.” Rex dragged Euan to his feet.

“Rex, the hell—” Was all he managed before Rex threw him out the door and shut it in his face. Euan glared at them from the other side of the observation window for several minutes before stomping off in an over-exaggerated huff.

Rex pressed his forehead against the door. “Alright.What’s worrying you about his fever that you don’t want to tell Euan?”

“It’s not a problem.” Nurse Joy’s attempt at chipper couldn’t have fallen more flat unless she toppled off her perch. “Really… probably.”

“…probably.”

Kai sighed. “Early on, one of the more physically stable patients had a fever go from mild to fatal in less than two hours. It’s never happened like that again but we all still get a little paranoid whenever someone has a temperature.”

“Technically everyone has a temperature.” Joy said.

“Shut up. You know what I mean.”

“You weren’t intending to lie to him, were you?”

“Nonono!” Nurse Joy hurriedly assured. “Just waiting for confirmation of the non-issue. We didn’t want to panic any more people than necessary.”

It would take at least an hour before he could convince Euan to leave anyway. It took two deep breaths for Rex to pull himself away from the door and steal Euan’s spot on the bed.Damn. Even blindfolded, sleeping Jasper looked like an overgrown twelve-year-old.

_“Doctor ′Aukai please report to The Command Center. There is a matter that requires your attention.”_

This facility actually had a place they referred to as The Command Center. That would never cease to be hilarious. When Rex looked up (before the announcement even finished) Kai had already vanished. Nurse Joy gave him a knowing look. “Sometimes I swear that man can teleport.”

“How’d he end up in charge of this place anyway?”

“Officially, he’s not. Unofficially, everybody that matters understands that he’s more competent than the official head doctor. There’s a good reason most of the patients have divided their treatment into Before Kai and After Kai. Most of them didn’t even know that the facility underwent a major management change until Kai started showing up.”She told him. “While we recognize that that might just be time and healing, we’re pretty sure Kai had a pretty big role in it. Euan too, and his little healing touches.”

“You know, there are chairs you can sit in now.” Which might be less precarious than an end-table that was likely not designed to support the weight of a grown woman.

“Nah. I’m good. Oh?” She looked more intently at the tablet screen. “Hello there. What’s this?”

That didn’t sound like a there’s a problem tone but… “What is it? Something wrong?”

“The company that makes floof also makes a kind of kinetic sand. Ooo, it looks fluffier than other brands too. I might have to order some.”

Rex relaxed. “You had me worried for a minute there. Kai’s going to axe anything that might make a mess if thrown.”

“For me, not Jasper. I have a bit of a collection. What? They’re all different. Don’t you judge me.”

“I’m not. No judging. No judging.” Not everybody’s stress relief involved shooting things or making craters in the desert. 

“Good. This is a very stressful job, ya know.”

He was well aware. “I thought you were working over there.”

“I am. I’m researching materials to aide in patient therapies. I’ve already got a list of other possible modeling doughs to try since floof doesn’t really look sculptable. It does look fun and squishy though and this bucket comes with little animal molds. That’d be a good one, I think.” The look she gave him made Rex certain he was going to get suckered into some game involving little floof animals.

Jasper shifted in his sleep; his breathing and heart-rate increasing sharply enough to set off a monitoring device. Joy was off her perch and checking monitors in a heartbeat. Jasper jerked again, groaning and mumbling nonsense and thrashing against his sheets. 

_Touch helps_. Remembered advice from long ago might not even apply to this situation but it was worth a shot. Rex lay his hand on Jasper’s shoulder. “It’s alright, Jasper. It’s okay. You’re safe.” Jasper only moaned and sobbed. His hands freed themselves from the confines of the blankets to tug at his hair. “Shit!”

Rex grabbed one of Jasper’s hands and Joy took the other. Together they worked his stiff fingers out of his hair and pinned his wrists to his sides while he struggled against him. Before they did, Officer Jenny and some orderly emerged from the observation room to untangle the blankets and get them out of the way. The orderly helped Joy secure Jasper’s wrist and Jenny helped Rex with the other. They then went to secure Jasper’s ankles. 

Rex held his shoulders down as gently as he could while keeping him still. “It’s okay, Jas.” He knew he was repeating himself but he had no idea if Jasper could even hear him. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

“Rex?” It was a quiet whimper between broken sobs but it was a response. 

“That’s right, Jas. I’m here. It’s okay.”

“Safe? We’re… safe?”

“That’s right. We’re safe. Everyone’s safe.”

“Safe… Rex, I… I can’t—” The words trailed off into choking sobs.

“Shhh. It’s alright, Jas. You don’t have to do anything.” 

Jasper didn’t respond again but Rex kept up a steady stream of reassurances until his thrashing deescalated into trembling and his sobs became turned into shaky, halting breaths. He didn’t react when Rex drew away and let Kai replace him. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing but he didn’t think his continued presence would make much difference and there was someone else who needed comfort now.

He found Euan sitting on the floor of the observation room, under the window, with his forehead against his knees. Rex sat next to him and pulled him into his arms. “He’s doing well.” Euan turned to look at him like he was a lunatic but Rex repeated himself. “He’s doing well.”

“Rex…”

“He’s doing well.” Maybe if he repeated it enough they’d both stop crying. “An episode or two or ten doesn’t change over all improvement. He’s taken interest in his own recovery and rehab. That’s _major_ progress over his certainty that he was unfixable and trying was pointless. You were able to stay with him today because he made a cognitive choice not to recognize the nice familiar presence with him because he knew he would react irrationally if he did. That’s huge. _He’s doing well_.”

“I know. I know that. It’s just…”

“I know, Euan. I know. It’s hard to celebrate his victories while he’s still suffering but that’s what we need to do. Celebrate all the small victories. All the little things.” Like that goofy happy dance Jesse did whenever they beat a level in one of their games. (“The fuck else am I going to celebrate in this shithole?” They’d said when Rex caught them at it and asked. “I am going to celebrate every goddamned celebrate-able thing I find. Even if it’s grade school math. Hell, I’d’ve thrown a party when Ryan croaked if we weren’t all dying of the same shit.”)

Euan leaned heavily into Rex’s shoulder. “Little victories. Small things.”

Rex held him tighter. “Small things.”

Small things. A night without screaming. A day with minimal seizures or irrational rages. A day where he could remember his caretakers’ names after they’ve left the room and hold a conversation without losing its thread every five minutes. Every day he didn’t hide under his covers and beg to be sedated because every kind of stimulation was Too Much. A day where he could laugh…

But it was hard, so hard, when Jasper was hurting. When those small victories couldn’t do anything to help him _now_. They just had to remember, had to _believe_ , that these moments of helplessness would pass. That there would be more small victories, small triumphs, small steps forward.

“Small things.”

“Small things.”

 

-break-

 

“It’s okay, Jasper. You’re okay. You’re safe.”

The words were really small, insignificant things when the world was cracked sideways and made up of ripped up puzzle pieces that were forcibly shoved in all the wrong places or couldn’t even be bothered to get shoved anywhere at all and just floated around in nowhere. Maybe that’s why they mattered so much. Small, insignificant, _understandable_ things when everything big and meaningful was too cracked for him to put together. A small meaningless thing with all the meaning in the world because it was too small to get ripped up and smashed in broken places.

Maybe they weren’t even true. But the voice that said them believed them. Maybe the world was to sharp and broken for him to be certain what they meant but he could feel the meaning in them; soft comfort when everything was trying to pull him apart. Whether it was true or not he could fixate on that softness. He could hold it close. He could wrap himself around it and inside it and let it soothe what hurt it could.

A small thing. An insignificant thing. The most important thing. A good thing.

It was okay.

He was okay.

He was safe.


	2. Floof!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I forgot to put it at the beginning of the first chapter: This work is dedicated to Flamethrower, who is a Nice Internet Person Who Is Nice and lets me babble at her. She is also having a bad day so I'm posting this chapter earlier than originally planned in an attempt to cheer her up a bit.

Chapter Two: Floof!

 

There was always a chance something would get thrown at you when you walked into Jasper’s room. Pillows, blankets, stress balls, any throwable thing that happened to be in reach, and a number of things that weren’t and nobody knew how he got his hands on. (Really, how the _fuck_ did he get his hands on that soap dispenser? It was on the other side of the fucking room.) 

Usually Rex had advance warning from whatever security officer was stationed in the observation room that Jasper was in a throwy mood. Instead, Officer Jenny grinned and waved him in without a word. Looking through the window to make his own assessment found Jasper upright, in minimum restraint, with a grin as wide as Jenny’s. Nurse Joy sat on the foot of Jasper’s bed, also grinning. The bed tray was positioned between them and it looked like they were playing some sort of game. With everyone appearing in such high spirits, Rex really wasn’t expecting to have to catch an object hurled at his head when he walked through the door.

It was spherical and roughly the size of one of Jasper’s much despised stress balls, but foam stress balls didn’t squish. Not like that anyway. (Plus Rex’d watched Jasper pick apart his last stress ball yesterday. He claimed shredding it to much better stress relief than squeezing it. Rex didn’t question it. It gave his fingers just as much of a workout as squeezing and more dexterity practice so, no one else questioned it either. Unfortunately, it gave him more ammunition.)

The thing was no longer spherical after squishing. It’d smooshed into a mold of his hand. Rex peeled the blob off his fingers and studied it. It was a strange material, a little like a kids’ modeling dough but lighter and fluffier like… marshmallow. If marshmallows weren’t sticky and were mostly made of air. Rex stretched it apart. It was even fluffier and more marshmallow-like on the inside. “So, this must be floof then.”

“Yup!” Jasper proudly declared while Joy laughed at them both.

“It’s…” There was a word for this. Rex twisted the floof one way and then squished it.

“Floofy.”

“That probably the best word for it.” Rex pulled a chair up to the side of the bed tray. “I was going to use marshmallow fluff.”

“It’s not for eating.” Jasper informed him in a very, very serious voice.

“How many times have you had to be reminded of that?”

“Only twice! And I didn’t actually try.” Jasper insisted, his face getting rather red. “Nurse Joy just thought I looked like I was thinking about it.”

“Were you?” Rex asked as he studied the floof snowmen and plastic molds scattered on the table. Joy had, indeed, gotten the bucket that came with the little animal molds. “Thinking about it?”

“Maybe.” Jasper mumbled. He ducked his head and focused on making his little molded floof penguin waddle about their manufactured floof snow field. When Rex thought that would be the end of it he continued. “My impulse control is… not.”

“It’s alright, Jas. Honestly the stuff is making me crave marshmallows too.”

Jasper didn’t respond; just waddled his penguin around for a few moments before abruptly shoving a mold at Rex. “Here. You be the bear. Nurse Joy’s the fox.”

“Alright. I’m the bear.” Rex started mooshing the former projectile into the mold. It took a few tries to get it back out of the mold without squishing it in someway but he successfully hopped his floof bear over to Joy’s fox and Jasper’s penguin. “So, what’re our little floof animals up to.”

What the floof animals were up to was trying to find a way to get Jasper’s penguin, who’d been kidnapped by the evil floofmen, home. This was the only reason Jasper could think of to explain why an antarctic penguin was in the arctic with an arctic fox and a polar bear. The story got more convoluted after that but it was simple enough to follow Jasper’s lead. 

The floofmen were basically snowmen made of floof (obviously.)They moved by rolling around as individual floof balls that stacked themselves upright when they reached their destination. The floofmen were responsible for changing the landscape in attempt to prevent the floof animals from escaping. Or something. Honestly, Rex wasn’t even trying to make the story make sense. He was just immensely enjoying squishing floof and watching Jasper have so much fun.

Eventually, Jasper’s difficulty regulating his grip strength and motor control smooshed his penguin beyond recognition. Instead of getting angry, snarling, and throwing something, he incorporated the smooshing into his story. Of course, this required all three of their floof animals getting flattenedby the paw print roller that came with the floof bucket.The roller turned out to be the Evil Mastermind and the floofmen were its Agents of Evil. They were able to revive their animals using The Magical Molds of Mystery, which they had to quest for by wiggling their squished animals like slugs.

By the time they had their animals remolded (which involved a strange chant that included the words “ashes to ashes and floof to floof) they were losing Jasper. He was drooping like a puppy or toddler that wanted to keep playing and did _not_ need a nap (but really needed a nap). With the utmost stealth, Rex went to wash his hands and Joy started packing away the extra floof. Jasper didn’t even notice until she gently took the penguin from his hand.

“Hey! We’ve’t got penguin home yet!”

“You need to rest, Jas.” Jasper made a distressed sound but didn’t protest when Rex came back with wet wipes to help him clean his hands. “We’ll get penguin home another time.”

“But you might not be here.” Jasper leaned back against his mostly upright mattress looking forlorn. “And I won’t remember what we were doing.”

“Joy and I will remember. We can remind you. It’s not a big deal if we never finish this specific game either.”

Now Jasper looked horrified as well as forlorn. “Then penguin will never get home.”

“Penguin is already home, Jas.” Rex dumped the used wipes on the table and rolled it away from the bed for someone to clean. “Penguin is in its floof bucket house with its floof animal friends.”

“Oh,” he smiled a bit at the cabinet Joy stashed the floof, “I guess he is. Found home. Found family. Home…” He awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. “Can you, uh, find where I flung my neck pillow earlier? Please?”

“You didn’t fling it.” Joy said. “You just knocked it off the side of the bed in your enthusiasm to get your hands on some floof. It should be right by your feet, Rex.”

Indeed it was. Rex helped Jasper situate the pillow comfortably. He was looking even more like he was about to pass out any second. “Do you want to lie down?”

“Not… not yet. Can I have some juice first? Please?”

“Sure. Are you going to need help drinking?”

Jasper studied his hands for a long moment while Joy grabbed the juice from the mini-fridge. “I think… I think I’ll be okay. If you use the cup with the big goofy handles and help me get my hands around it.”

Jasper managed the cup fine once Rex helped him grasp it. The problem was he would sometimes just stop and frown at his cup like he didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing with it. Usually guiding it back upward was enough for him to figure it out. Other times he needed a verbal reminder.

It took a couple extra positioning pillows to get Jasper settled comfortably for his nap. There were unfortunate side effects to slouching over a table for an afternoon when you had nerve damage in your neck and spine. Mainly pain in your neck and spine. They were going to need to get him a back brace or a least a proper backrest if they were going to start keeping him upright for longer periods of time.

Jasper caught Rex’s wrist before he could finish tucking his blankets around him. “Rex?”

“Yeah, Jas?”

“Thanks… thanks for playing with me. I know… I know you probably were just gonna come check up on me and then go do something more important than entertaining an overgrown five-year-old. I… I don’t really have a good excuse for acting like a five-year-old but—”

“Brain damage is a pretty good excuse.”

“Yeah… yeah. I guess. I…Just… Thanks. It was… fun?” Jasper sounded like he wasn’t sure it was the right word.

“Yeah, Jas. It was fun. I’m going to have to find myself a bucket of floof for home.”

Jasper smiled. He closed his eyes and he settled into his blankets as Rex finished tucking them around him. Apparently he was done with being awake.

“Get some rest, Jas. We’ll have more fun later.”

Rex waited until he was as certain as he could be that Jasper was asleep before addressing Joy. “I was told there were a few… incidents.”

Joy sighed, finding herself a chair and once more co-opting Jasper’s bed tray for a work desk. “It’s a fear response, not rage. Not completely irrational either. The problem with his increased awareness and recognition is that when he sees someone he doesn’t recognize he _knows_ they’re a stranger, rather than someone he knows but can’t recognize.”

“Which triggers a fear response. While not an irrational trigger, I’m going to guess the response is irrational in intensity.”

“Indeed. The solution is simple enough. We just have to make sure to have anyone who’s doing any kind of work in here or his observation room is properly introduced by someone he trusts every time they’re in here until he can recognize who they are and that they’re supposed to be here.”

Rex rubbed his forehead. “So, irrational response intensity aside, these specific incidents are actually a sign of improvement.”

“We think so. Now,” Joy’s face took on a serious look that worried him for a second, “I’m pretty sure Jasper was right and you did have other business to attend to before we hijacked you into a floof adventure, Major Tjin.”

She was right of course. Rex was certain Kai would forgive him for the delay. “You’ll have to tell me where you found that stuff.”It didn’t really need to be said but he needed to say it. “Look after him. Make sure everyone else does too.” 

“Will do, Rex.” Joy smiled but it was a sad one. “Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Facts:  
> Floof is, indeed, a real product and it is, indeed, very squishy.  
> The set in this chapter is a real set. It's called Polar Babies.
> 
> Less Fun Fact: Don't expect another chapter for a least a week; my brain might explode.


	3. Jello! (Don’t you laugh at me Rex!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bit of emotion whiplash in this one.

Chapter 3: Jello! (Don’t you laugh at me Rex!)

 

The tvs were… nice. The colors were desaturated so they weren’t so bright. The screen brightness was turned down too, so it wasn’t so bright. That was good. It meant his head didn’t hurt when he looked at it.They’d rigged it so certain sound ranges were toned down or muted all together. That was better. Bight made his head hurt and made him hide under his pillow. Loud made him react like someone was pointing a gun at him and that was usually… bad.

Someone did a smart thing and thought that they would want to watch more than just educational kids’ shows and got a slew of other low violence programing that was actually intended for an adult audience. Not all of them were as enthusiastic as Jasper and Jesse about using children’s things to help put their brains back together so the staff was trying to find ‘grown-up’ toys to do the same things.

So, the tvs were nice. But Jasper couldn’t really say he was happy with them. The problem wasn’t the tvs, or the programing, or… or…something. He couldn’t think of the other reason right now but there was one. There was! …That was the problem. Him. Him and his stupid, fucked up brain.

He’d been exited and Nurse Whose-Name-Was-Currently-Unremembered helped him queue up a couple hours of shows. The problem made itself obvious when his brain floated away halfway through the first episode and didn’t find its way back until three episodes later. Jasper had been so confused and freaked out he’d freaked out Nurse What’s-Her-Name.

This would prove to be a trend despite the fact most of these shows were geared toward the attention spans of easily distracted small children. But Jasper’s problem wasn’t necessarily _distraction_. When he lost focus he just kind of… floated away. He didn’t think this floating thing was new. He just didn’t think he’d had something like a tv to help him notice that it was happening. It would explain his issues noticing time. Nurse Joy had gone to discuss these thoughts with Kai, leaving him in the temporary care of Nurse Who’d-Been-Introduced-But-Was-Still-Unremembered. (Officer Jenny was still in the observation room. Nurse Joy told him so when she left and he’d checked twice.)

For now, he wrapped himself around a particularly soft body pillow and watched the same episode of cute things on an indefinite loop. He figured that this way he’d eventually see the whole episode, even if it was all mixed up and out of order. Plus the sound was nice and kept away the Too Quiet. Stroud’s Voice still tried to fill the empty bit of his head when it was Too Quiet. (Once The Voice had merged with the sound from the show. It had ended up with Stroud somehow saying the narrator’s lines and then, when it cut to the meowing kittens, that had been Stroud’s Voice too. He’d laughed hard enough to spook whoever his on duty nurse was. It was _Stroud_ making _kitten_ sounds. How was he supposed to _not_ laugh?)

Maybe the floating was a good thing. The floating had been kinda nice when all he wanted was to not hurt so much but he wanted more than just not hurting now. Maybe that was the problem. He was asking too much; wanting too much. He’d already been given far more than he deserved. He had no right to asking for more. Or even wanting more. He shouldn’t want to get better. It would be easier for him to hurt people if he was better. He should be fine with enough better to be the least amount of possible hassle to present and future caretakers. Or maybe the least possible danger. That was probably more important. 

“Hey Jas.” Oh, Nurse Joy was back. Jasper blinked and tried to focus on the tv. Had there always been an iguana in this episode? “You with me, Jasper?”

“‘m here.” Jasper stayed curled on around his pillow, pretending he knew why there was an iguana hanging out with the kittens.

He heard Nurse Joy fiddling with his bed tray, rolling it around and putting things on it. He thought anyway. “We think it might be easier for you focus on things that you’re able to directly interact with. If you’d like,” _If he’d like??_ “it might be a good idea to try watching some of those interactive kids’ shows; the ask and answer kind that address the viewer directly.” So Nick Jr. for awhile then. “Jasper?”

“‘m listening.” He was just also floaty, grumpy, and possibly on the edge of tripping into some Bad headspace.

He heard his table roll back over. Nurse Joy put her hand on his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get you upright, okay? I’ve got something I think’ll cheer you up.”

Jasper let her help him sit up. He must’ve still been floating a bit because one second he just sitting up and the next the head of the bed was raised and apparently he had a new backrest pillow. It was kinda comfy.

Nurse Joy pulled his tray closer. On it was a bowl and a funny looking spoon.

The bowl was not full of nutrient goop. Nurse Joy was handing him the spoon.

 

-break-

 

“REX!” Rex hadn’t even managed to take a second step out of the hallway. Considering what Kai had told him about Jasper’s earlier mood, he really wasn’t expecting to be greeted with such enthusiasm.“Rex! I have Jello! And a goofy spoon! Look at my goofy spoon!”

Rex paused in the observation room only long enough for Jenny to properly wave him in. “What’re you shouting about now, Jas?”

“Jello!” Jasper tried to lift his bowl, failed, and gestured with his spoon instead. “Goofy spoon!” Jasper’s spoon had an overlarge handle with a strap that went over the back of his hand to help hold in place. He decided to prove this by letting go so only the strap was holding it. “No finger control necessary!”

“That is a very useful goofy spoon.” Rex wrapped Jasper’s fingers back around the spoon. “Fingers do help though. Finally letting you try out some semi-solid food?”

“Yup!” Jasper successfully got a spoonful of jello into his mouth while Rex pulled up a chair. “Jello! Orange jello. I like orange jello. And yellow jello. And green jello.”

Up close, Rex could see that Jasper was taking little nibbles out of his jello bowl rather than whole spoonfuls. He couldn’t tell if Jasper was shoving the whole spoon into his mouth due to muscle control issues or vigorous enthusiasm. “How about red jello?”

“Bleh.” Jasper wrinkled up his nose and fed himself another vigorous nibble.

“I suppose that explains why there was only red jello left in Euan’s apartment during our first date.”

That made Jasper pause his enthusiastic jello nibbling. “Euan fed you _jello_ on your first date?”

“There was literally no other food in the apartment.” 

Jasper bit his spoon and Joy giggled into her omnipresent tablet. “That was your first date? Jello?”

“ _Expired_ Jello. They didn’t give you expired jello, did they?” 

“No no, god no!” Jasper lost it then, basically smacking himself in the face with his spoon when he tried to stifle his giggles. “Can you imagine what Kai would do if he found out they were giving his patients expired jello?”

“Euan says jello is forever.”

“Tell that to _Kai_.”

Rex lost his straight face there. “Yeah, it’d be a bit of a mess.”

“Just a _bit_.” Joy was now doubled over her tablet instead of hiding behind it and Jasper looked like he was trying to stop himself from doing the same thing and landing face first into his jello bowl.

“A-alright. No… no more laughing.” Jasper said. He rubbed his non-spoonified hand across his diaphragm. “It’s starting to hurt.”

“Okay, serious time.” Rex put on his best serious face. Apparently it didn’t help.

“R-e-e-x!”

Rex shut up and let the pair of them wind down, which happened faster than he thought it would because Jasper’s laughter became interspersed with hacking coughs. Joy instantly transformed from Friend Mode to Nurse Mode which prompted Jasper to switch to I’m Going to Say I’m Fine Even Though I’m Hacking Up Internal Organs Mode. Jasper leaned back with his eyes closed while his breathing evened back out while Joy glared at his blood oxygen level readings as if telling it not to even _think_ about dropping if it knew what was good for it.

“I’m fine.” Jasper says for the first time without coughing in the middle of the word. “Really.”

Joy kept scowling at the machine. “Your numbers look good and you managed not to wheeze the word.” She turned her scowl on Jasper. “Any extra chest pains?”

Jasper shook his head. “Just some sore abs from laughing and coughing and coughlaughing. Can we get back to my awesome jello now?”

“Sure Jas.” Rex had to bite his lip not to laugh and the word coughloughing (presumably coughing and laughing mashed together.) “What’s your awesome jello like?”

“Awesome.” Pause. “Jello.” Another pause. “I… I’ll think of more words. I will!”

“It’s alright, Jas. You don’t need to give a dissertation on your jello.”

“That would be hilarious though. Imagine turning in your doctorate dissertation and it’s all about jello. Pages and pages of completely actual academic jello analysis. And Professor Doctor Stuffypants has to read it and evaluate it seriously.” 

Rex quickly smothered his laugher. “That is, indeed, hilarious but we’re trying to not be hilarious right now.” The smug, cocky grin Jasper gave him before very deliberately turning back to his jello told Rex that that was _exactly_ what Jasper was trying to do. Brat. “How’s it feel in your stomach? Feeling sick at all?”

Jasper gave him a look. “I’m always sick.”

Brat. Might as well tell him that. “Nausea, brat.”

“What? Are you my doctor?”

“B-r-a-t. The question stands.” Because sometimes it was easier for Jasper to talk to him than the actual medical staff. Even Kai and Joy.

Jasper rolled his eyes. He tipped his head one way, then the other, and took a nibble of jello. “Nothing new or different. Not yet anyway.” He took slightly larger nibble. “I had trouble swallowing if I tried too much at once. But that’s not new it’s the same with drinking anything.”

“So, we’re gonna have to wait awhile before we know if jello can be a regular part of your diet alongside the goop.”

Jasper wrinkled his nose at the mention of the goop but when he tried to speak his jaw immediately clamped itself shut. His eyes rolled back and every muscle in his body stiffened.

“Fuck.” Rex pulled the tray away and Joy reclined the bed as the stiffness became spasms. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

The biggest problem with seizures was that there wasn’t fuck shit you could do about them. You just had to sit and wait for it to be over. Joy passed the time by glaring a beeping monitoring equipment. Rex watched Jasper.

It was two minutes and twenty-seven seconds when Jesper let out a heavy sigh and it took another minute and twelve seconds for his eyes to blink open and focus (sort of) on Rex. “Orange.”

“… what?”

“‘nother word for m’ jello. Orange.” Jasper blinked several times and glanced around. “Where’d jello go?”

All Rex could do was burry his face in his hands a laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes Too Cute! is an actual show and it is actually prefaced by the line Jasper quoted in Chapter One.


	4. Jello Thieves, Vengeance, and Progress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot packed into this chapter, like, a lot a lot. Like, I nearly doubled the word count with one chapter a lot. I thought about splitting it up but there really wasn't a good place to do it.
> 
> Also, you're all probably familiar with the bun scale soooo, you might want to find yourself some buns. Or see if Animal Planet is reshowing the Puppy Bowl.

Chapter Four: Jello Thieves, Vengeance, and Progress.

 

Jasper was annoyed. He was irked, and irritated, and… other things that meant annoyed but he couldn’t think of right now. They took away his jello.

_They took away his jello_.

Sure, he’d tried to throw the bowl at Nurse Whoever That Was and since they’d apparently _glued_ it to his tray he’d sorta thrown his tray. The wheels were locked so it’d only slid a few inches but he’d still thrown it. But that didn’t mean they had to take his jello. Sure, he didn’t exactly have anything to eat it with since he’d gotten his spoon off his hand and successfully threw _it_ at Nurse Whoever Who Couldn’t Take A Hint.

But they didn’t have to _take_ his jello.

So now he curled up facing away from the observation window with his wrists in partial restraint, a stupid sore throat, and no jello.

And the cool jello had been helping with the sore throat thing too. A cool drink would probably help too but he didn’t think he’d get one if he asked because he might just throw it. And he didn’t ask because he wasn’t even sure he wouldn’t throw it in vengeance for his lost jello.

Why was he even fixating on the stupid jello like a fucking five-year-old? Just because his brain couldn’t process big things didn’t mean it had to focus all of its limited processing power on tiny things. Like stupid fucking jello. He hated it. He hated that he didn’t know how to fix it. He hated that he hated being upset about the stupid fucking jello less than he hated losing the stupid fucking jello. Stupid brain.

Why’d they have to take his jello dammit!

It would help if he could actually tell when he was hungry or not but he couldn’t pick ‘hungry’ out of the myriad sensations constantly bombarding his stupid brain. It left him with the constant worry that he was going to starve to death (among other constant worries of what might kill him) despite Kai’s reassurances that he was getting what he needed. It was hard to believe when it felt like every part of his body was trying to eat itself and everything else. He knew his goop was probably way better for getting his body stuff it needed but goop was gross and jello felt good to eat and they took it away.

They took away his jello.

He buried himself under his blankets as best as he could and resolved that he was never ever coming back out unless offerings of jello were given. With exception made for his drugs ‘cause he needed those to be less dangerous and he didn’t want to be dangerous. 

Even if they took away his jello.

 

-break-

 

“If you give me goop, I’m gonna throw it at you.”

Rex paused in the doorway, carefully studying the blanket lump that was Jasper. “Even if it’s your regularly scheduled goop?”

“It can’t be. It hasn’t been nearly long enough to be regularly scheduled goop.”

“Or it is your regularly scheduled goop and you lost track of time while having your stint as a blanket ball.” 

“ _Stint_?” Jasper sounded offended by the word for reasons unknown and then forlorn. “I never have track of time.”

“So, how do you know it hasn’t been long enough to be your regularly scheduled goop?”

“Shu-shut up! The Blanket God does not accept offerings of goop. The Blanket God only accepts offerings of jello as reparation for that which was stolen from him.”

So we were having one of these days. “If you’d successfully flung your jello bowl at him the result would be the same. You’d still have no jello.”

“‘said shut up!” The blanket lump twisted around in a manor that surely tied it up in knots. “The Blanket God doesn’t want Reason. The Blanket God wants jello!”

“The Blanket God requires more nutrition than jello can offer alone.”

The blanket lump thrashed around some more. “You speak more of Reason! Reason is not jello! The Blanket God demands jello!” 

“For fuck’s sake Jasper! Quit twisting yourself in knots before you suffocate yourself.”

“No.” There was deliberate twisting from the blanket lump. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”

“Be reasonable. Please? You’re not going to get any jello if you stay under there either.”

The blanket lump twisted again and a pair of eyes peeked out from a crack in its folds. They were likely attempting to glare but only achieved a pout. “No.”

Desperate times called for desperate measures. It took awhile but Rex and Jasper’s on duty caretaker (a giant bear of a man who literally introduced himself as Bear) got a passively resisting Jasper untangled from his blankets and upright. He slouched against his backrest and pout/glared at them with his arms crossed. “The Blanket God is displeased to have been removed from his temple… and cold.”

Oh for the love of…

The good Nurse Bear sat back down in what Jasper called the I’m-Watching-You Chair and seemed perfectly content to let Rex take lead on this even though he was supposed to be the professional. Asshole.

Rex sighed and pulled a chair up to Jasper’s bedside. “Look, I know you’re pissed that your jello got taken away. I know you’re also pissed that you did something stupid and impulsive that _got_ your jello taken away. Neither of us can go back and change those things. I know it’s gross goop but it’s gross _necessary_ goop. You can have more jello when you’re done with your goop.”

Jasper successfully scowled but it was still far closer to a pout than he’d probably like. “Jello first. How do I know you’ll really give me jello after the goop?”

“How do I know you’ll really drink your goop after you’ve gotten your jello.” They eyed each other as if they were debating something of far greater importance. Though for Jasper jello likely was the most important thing at the moment. “We seem to be at an impasse”

Something small in Jasper’s posture and expression shifted slightly but Rex couldn’t quite put a word to what changed. “Why do you care?”

“I’m sorry?”

Jasper’s head tipped to one side, then the other, but his expression didn’t change. “If I drink the goop. Why do you care?”

“Because it’s full of nice things like fat and protein and calories that you need—”

“No.” Jasper cut him off. He gestured vaguely in the direction of the observation window and I’m-Watching-You chair. “That’s why _they_ care. Why do _you_ care?”

Ah, so it was the daily episode of ‘why are you helping me you should hate me and want vengeance.’ “I know you don’t believe it, Jasper, but I care about you and don’t want you to die of starvation.”

“But—”

“Jasper.”

Jasper stared do at his lap for several minutes before saying, “Give me the stupid goop.” Once the cup was securely in his hands he stared at it for several more minutes. Rex was about ask if he needed help but then he tipped his head back and chugged the whole thing down as fast as the spill-proof cup and swallowing issues would allow.

“Jasper! Slow down!”

“Ugh.” He tossed the cup aside and doubled over. “Double ugh.”

Rex grabbed the bucket that sat at the bedside for just this reason and got Jasper positioned over it. Jasper sputtered and coughed a bit but fortunately didn’t spit anything out other than excess saliva. “That was a stupid idea. That was a really, really, stupid, stupid idea. Why’d you let me do that, Rex? Why din’t you stop me?”

Rex rubbed Jasper’s back. “I tried. You didn’t exactly give me time to, kid.”

“Blech. Ge’me somethin’ to wash m’ mouth.”

Nurse Bear decided to be helpful again and poured a cup of water. Unfortunately he didn’t use one of the cups Jasper could use on his own. Though given what just happened it was probably a good idea to have someone else in control of his intake and he didn’t seem interested in unclamping his fingers from the bucket anyway.

Jasper only swallowed a few of the sips of water Rex gave him, spitting the others into the bucket. “Maybe… maybe wait a bit for jello.”

“Might be a good idea.” Rex pulled the bed tray back over so Jasper could set the bucket on it instead of clutching it to his chest.

Jasper thunked his head onto the tray next to the bucket. “Why’d you let me do that, Rex?”

“I di—” Rex didn’t get to finish defending himself.

“Didn’t table have a bowl glued to it earlier? Do I ’ave two tables now?”

“No Jasper, the bowl was held down by suction not glue.”

“Oh. That’s kinda nifty… m’ throat hurts.”

“That’s what happens when you chug a bunch of thick liquid when you have a damaged throat. Plus the Night Watch said you were screaming early this morning.” 

“They put all the stupid people on the Night Watch ‘cause we’re supposed to be sleeping.”

Rex had no idea how or when the night shift staff started being called the Night Watch but it happened. Everyone called them that and it was unlikely to change anytime soon. “That is not a denial of the screaming.”

“It was too quiet.” Jasper grumbled. “Then I was too loud and then I was angry.”

“You could’ve asked for help. Someone could’ve played some music or an audiobook for you.”

“I… I know that. I do. I just… I couldn’t… I don’t… can’t… I _knew_ I could… I just couldn’t think to do it… Sorry.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for, Jas.”

“But I messed up.”

“The messing up was caused by the fact that your brain is a tire fire dumped into a shit hole. Even if it wasn’t, being freaked out by creepy silence in a creepy hospital isn’t something you need to apologize for.”

Jasper didn’t respond; just hummed and buried his face in his elbow. “If… if I promise not to knot myself up in it, can I have a blanket back? If I promise? ’s cold.”

“Sure thing, Jas.” Rex found one of the heavier blankets and wrapped it around Jasper’s shoulders. “You should try to sit up. Your back and neck are going to be killing you soon enough if you keep laying like that.”

“Yeah. Fine.” Jasper’s attempt to push himself upright failed spectacularly and it was all Rex’s fault. Really. He did a dumb thing and forgot to lock the bed tray’s wheels. So when Jasper pushed against it, it lurched away, ricocheting off the footboard and sending the bucket on an unscheduled flight that fortunately spilled on the floor and not the bed. Rex was just glad he caught Jasper before he managed to hit his head on anything. The kid did not need more brain damage.

Rex and Jasper both stared blankly at the poor bucket’s final resting place until Nurse Bear got up. “I’ll go find a mop.”

They gave themselves a quick moment of what-the-fuck laughter. “I did not do that.” Jasper insisted as Rex settled him back against his backrest. “That is not my fault.”

“No, this one’s completely on me. Do you want another bucket or do you think your lunch’s going to stay down?”

“You have a very strange definition of lunch.” Jasper did his usual odd one way and then the other head tilt that was reserved for sorting through what was what of the overwhelming sensations constantly shoving their way in his brain. “I don’t think I’m going to gag if I swallow wrong but I feel like I swallowed a pile of lead rocks.” Rex got another bucket from the cupboard and gave it to Jasper. “Thanks. I… uh… My _stint_ as Blanket God didn’t mess up any schedules, did it? I thought I was supposed to be scheduled for some test-thing? Or am I messing up time again?”

“You were but your appointment with the MRI was canceled due to a scheduling mishap.”

“A scheduling mishap. Not an emergency. Did they manage to schedule three of us on top of each other again?”

“No not that.They’ve yet to repeat _that_ feat of spectacular stupidity. What they _did_ manage to do was have someone arrive early for their appointment and, long story short, Jasse and Dick ended up in the same place at the same time.”

“Oh, _no_.”

“Oh, _yes_.”

“Are they… They’re okay, yeah?”

“They banged each other up a bit but they’re both fine. Just sleeping off some sedatives and an extra dose of suppressant.” Rex was _not_ going to tell Jasper that Jesse had somehow shredded the strap on one of their wrist restraints in their zeal to punch themself a dickhead (the man was aptly named) and jacked up their elbow in the process. Jasper did not need a fear of breaking his restraints added to his list of semi-rational phobias to react irrationally to. “Some things in their general vicinity were not so lucky.”

“Did they break the MRI machine?” Jasper didn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t thrilled with the idea that someone other than him broke an MRI. He was personally responsible for the fact that the department’s sorry excuse for a hospital was down to one functional MRI. He never seemed certain whether he wanted to celebrate its death or apologize for it (he had yet to actually apologize though).

“No, they didn’t break the MRI.” Rex pretended not to notice Jasper’s obvious disappointment. “However, the observation room needs several new monitor screens, a new door, a new window, and a new wall.”

“A _wall_?”

“A wall.”

“How did they… no…just no. I don’t want to know.”

“Neither do I.”

“So… no MRIs for a while then?”

“Not for a few days at least. You don’t have to look so happy about it.”

“ _You’re_ not the one whose head they keep putting in the noisiest noise machine to ever noisily noise.”

“That’s true but it’s a very helpful noisy noise machine. We can find you some good ear plugs.”

“No. They feel ucky and they don’t stop my brain from vibrating.”

Rex didn’t manage to get an explanation for ‘brain vibrating,’ though he had an idea, because Nurse Bear came back with the mop and Jasper had to give his undivided attention to staring at him and not respond to Rex until he was done cleaning and walked out with the mop and dirty bucket. “He was supposed to be here, yeah?” 

“Yes. That’s Nurse Bear. He’s on Jasper-sitting duty.”

“Then… he wasn’t supposed to _leave_ , right?”

“No, he wasn’t.” There was supposed to be at least one trained medical staff member in the room with the double-dosed patients at all times. Rex might have military medical certifications but he wasn’t staff. 

“And the security officer wasn’t supposed to let him.”

“Nope.” It was literally in the security officers’ job description to make sure nobody entered _or left_ when they weren’t supposed to and to make sure the patient under their watch had proper medical supervision at all times. Technically, Rex shouldn’t have let him leave either but he wasn’t here to do their jobs for them.

The current security officer stiffened and paled fast enough to attract Jasper’s attention. “Somebody’s in trouuuuuble.”

“Yup.” Kai was not going to be thrilled about the need to give at least three groups of people lectures on procedure and how _it exists for a reason_ and _I’ll not have you fuckers putting my patients in danger because you can’t fucking communicate_. Maybe he’d just give it to the whole shift after shift change. 

Unfortunately this wasn’t Pokemon. They couldn’t all be competent Nurse Joys and Officer Jennys. 

Jasper tilted his head one way, then the other. It was slightly a different head tilt that meant he was attempting Logic. Rex honestly didn’t notice the difference until Joy mentioned it. Jasper had a number of similar but different this-way that-way head tilts depending on what thoughts or feelings he was attempting sort out and how successfully he was doing so. This particular tilt was Does Not Compute, Reevaluating. (It was a close cousin to the unfortunately more common Does Not Compute, I WILL MAKE IT COMPUTE and the I Don’t Care If This Computer Doesn’t Have A Disk Drive, I WILL SHOVE THIS DISK UP ITS ASS AND IT WILL READ IT.)

“Maybe all the orderlies are cleaning up Jesse and The Dick’s mess?” Jasper suggested.

“That was more than two hours ago and I doubt they put _all_ of the orderlies on it.”

“Maybe they think you work here ‘cause you’re always here.”

“Jesse’s sister has been known to eat in the staff room, shower in the staff bathroom, and sleep in the crash room. Nobody thinks she works here.”

“Jesse’s sister is Jesse’s _sister_. You’re not my sister. You’re not… you’re not supposed to care so much.”

Again? Didn’t they just fucking do this? “If I’m not supposed to care what am I supposed to do?”

“You’re supposed to want vengeance.”

Yes, they were, in fact, doing this again. Luckily Rex had what Jasper might consider an appropriate response. “Well, you’re in luck. I brought some vengeance. It’s even Kai approved. Once we’ve go proper supervision again anyway.”

If they were sticking to computer metaphors, Rex was getting the Jasper equivalent of the Blue Screen Of Death.

 

-break-

 

“EUAN!” Euan flinched in the doorway to Jasper’s observation room and prepared to vacate immediately when Jasper started raging about treason and betrayal but instead, “Your boyfriend is the demon child of the devil, spawned from the depths of Hell itself to torment my tortured soul!”

That was… different. Usually Jasper’s insistences that everything was somehow Rex’s fault included a rant full of the kind of convoluted logic that could equate pirates to ninja or didn’t even bother with reasons. They weren’t usually so… melodramatic either. 

And they never made Rex laugh like that. “You’re the one who kept saying I should want vengeance. You don’t get to complain about the vengeance.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to defy the Geneva Conventions!”

Something… strange was going on here. On the other side of the observation window, Jasper was upright with a bowl of jello on his table in front of him but was ignoring it in favor of watching the just out of sight television with a look of utter horror. Rex was seated next to him laughing, and looking rather smug and pleased with himself. Kai was on the computer in the corner with both screens in use, a tablet on the table, another in his lap, and a clipboard for good measure; because he hadn’t yet crammed enough work into that corner. 

Kai wasn’t looking at his work though. Kai was looking at Euan. Slowly enough not to attract Jasper’s attention, Kai gestured for him to come in.

This could either be very good or very, very bad. Only one way to find out though.

Euan walked into the room as if everything was normal. As if Jasper had just been injured on some stupid mission and was whining about bed rest. “What’s going on, Jas?”

“Cruel and unusual punishment is what’s going on!”

What— The television screen came into view as Euan entered the room and he stopped short when he got an eyeful of a snake being used as a rescue rope… The desaturated color palette didn’t make it any less horrible. “This is Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

“Yes.”

“YES! This is… this is… this is this!”

Euan pulled the stool up to Jasper’s bedside. “Very articulate, Jasper.”

“Shut up! I have fucking brain damage and this fucking movie is killing off more of my vulnerable brain cells and I need them!”

It was so… normal; sitting with Jasper while he ranted continuously at the movie, pausing his tirade only long enough to bicker with Rex and take bites out of his jello. Euan kept his own comments to a minimum. He was terrified that the next word would be the one that set Jasper off into a mad rage. Rex and Kai were focusing all of their attention on Jasper while pretending not to.

But it was so hard because it was so fucking normal. They might as well have been sitting in their living room while inflicting this monstrosity on Jasper. It wasn’t normal though. There were little quirks in Jasper’s behavior that was odd, childlike, and… throwing his spoon at the television when his jello was gone and then spent five minutes trying to pry his suction bowl off the table so he could throw that too.

… Well, okay, throwing things at this movie was completely justifiable on anyone’s sanest day. At least he finished the jello first.

Only now Jasper was watching _him_. No, Jasper was _staring_ at him; his head tilted to one side and eyes wide. 

Everyone was on their feet in an instant when Jasper lunged at Euan. Rex caught Jasper by his shoulders and The Nurse-of-the-Day pulled Euan back several steps. 

No, not this, not now. Not when Jasper had been having so much fun, had been so happy, even if he’d been whining and complaining the whole time. Dammit. He shouldn’t’ve come in. He should’ve stayed away; stayed in the observation room with the oneway window on where he was less likely to cause Jasper anymore complications and Jasper—

Jasper wasn’t screaming. He wasn’t struggling against Rex’s hold. He didn’t even look angry. He looked _desperate_ ; like he was going to cry. Dammit all, now Euan was going to cry too.

“Euan?” Jasper reached out but immediately drew his hand back to his chest. “I— Y-you’re here?” He leaned back and let Rex get a better hold on him. “…and I’m still here?”

Euan knew he should leave. They’d taken far too much of a risk already. The last time his presence had given Jasper a seizure that had caused a major backslide in his overall cognitive functioning that had taken a week to recover from. It was an utterly horrible thing to witness from the darkened observation room, unable to do anything but watch as Jasper struggled with simple things he’d recently triumphed over, and equally unable to do anything but blame himself. He did not want that to happen again.

But…

But Jasper was reaching out to him, desperate, afraid, and fully aware. If he walked away now it would break his brother’s heart and that… that could be just as damaging. 

Euan stepped forward. He reached out and took Jasper’s hand. “Where else would either of us be?”

Jasper was still staring, eyes drifting between Euan’s face and his hand. “I don’t know… I… It’s like my head is to big to fit inside of itself and everything else crowds all the _me_ out of it. ’s like there’s so much in there I don’t know how much of it’s actually _me_ or there’s so much _me_ that it doesn’t all fit but it tries to shove all of itself in there and it hurts and I—” He dropped his head and pressed his forehead against their joined hands. “I’ma stop trying to make this thought words before it makes me lose all my words.”

“Is that what happens when you lose your words?” Kai crept closer, likely ready to spring with a sedative if necessary. “You try to hard to find words for something hard to describe and then you start having trouble finding words at all?”

“Mm hmm. Not thinking about it. No.” Jasper shook his head. “No. No. No.”

“You don’t have to, Jas.”

“No?”

“No.” Euan rested his other hand on Jasper’s hair. That was Jasper’s breaking point. He and Rex held Jasper between them as he sobbed into Euan’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Jas. It’s okay.”

“No.” Jasper sobbed. “It’s not it’s not it’s not. I’m sorry I’m sorry sorrysorrysorry.”

They really couldn’t do anything but hold him and watch carefully for any sudden changes in behavior as Jasper sobbed and babbled endless apologies in at least five languages. That and try not to have complete breakdowns themselves while keeping up their own babble of reassurance and forgiveness.

“You’re still here.” Jasper whispered several minutes after the sobbing babble faded into shaky breaths. “Still here.”

“Yeah.” Euan managed a deep, shaky breath of his own. “So are you.”

Jasper let out something like a single hysterical giggle. “This is the awkwardist group hug ever.”

That got equally hysterical giggles from Rex and Euan. “Yeah, it sort of is.” Especially since Rex’s hold was still mostly emergency restraint and Jasper was gripping Euan’s hand with both of his.

“Euan.” Euan lifted his head from where it rested on top of Jasper’s. Rex was suppressing laughter. Euan was almost offended but then Rex said, “we forgot to finish watching the movie again.”

Euan looked up at the tv and watched the credits roll by for several seconds. “Congrats Rex. You’ve managed to recreate our first date from the jello to skipping out on the end of the movie.”

“Not yet.” Rex leaned forward and kissed Euan’s nose. “There.” Euan giggled and kissed him back properly.

“Can’t be. M’ jello’s not expired.” Jasper shifted a bit but it didn’t look like he was going to be releasing Euan’s hand from his grip or lifting his head from his shoulder. “You’d better not be making out over m’ head. ‘cause ‘m pretty sure that’s how _that_ movie ended.”

“We’re not, Jasper. Promise.” 

“Good. No sexy times in other people’s hospital rooms. Specially mine.”

“No sexy times around sick baby brothers, got it.”

“Not a _baby_.” Jasper insisted. He sniffled a bit. “Oh, no. Oh, fuck.”

The rest of the room immediately tensed. “Jasper?”

“Fuckidy fuckidy fuck.” That was not helpful at all. “Somebody get me some fucking juice, stat.”

That was helpful, if confusing. “There a reason for the immediate need of juice.”

“I cried all my hydration all over Euan’s shirt. I need my hydration back before Kai gets pissed about the color of my piss.”

Kai choked. “You were awake for that? You _remember_ that?”

Jasper snickered into Euan’s shoulder. “It’s one of the first things I really remember. You were sooooo mad.”

“Because there was no fucking reason for you to be that fucking dehydrated except pure stupidity.”

Listening to Kai rant about Jasper’s early caretakers as he got Jasper’s juice was both hilarious and greatly distressing. Listening to competent people tear incompetent people apart was always fantastic but in this case these horrible incompetents were caretakers for his very ill brother. That made it a lot less funny. Jasper’s life had been in their hands and they’d fucked up. That wasn’t even including that some of them were responsible for the fact that Jasper was so fucked up to begin with. 

“C’mon, Jas.” Euan ran his fingers through Jasper’s hair. Jasper shook his head. “You can’t drink your juice with your face buried there.”

Rex gently tugged Jasper’s shoulders and Jasper let himself be pulled back but refused to let go of Euan’s hand. With his free hand, Euan helped Rex nudge Jasper back against his backrest. Jasper, for his part, didn’t actively resist. He didn’t exactly help either; preferring to fixate on his and Euan’s clinging hands.

Rex sat on the bed next to Jasper with his arm around Jasper’s shoulders. It was both a comfort and an infuriating, necessary restraint because Jasper’s mood could one-eighty in a heartbeat. Jasper didn’t seem to want to shift his eyes from staring at their entwined hands, like he was afraid to look up.

“Hey, Jas?” Euan tapped Jasper’s chin to try to get him to look up but Jasper shook his head. “You want your juice, yeah?” Nod. “It’ll be kind of hard from there, unless you want a straw?” Shake. “Then why don’t you tell us what’s wrong?”

“What if— What if I go away?” Jasper mumbles. The muscles in his hands started to get twitchy with the amount of force Jasper was using to maintain his grip. “What if the angry twitch in my head gets to big and shoves the rest of me out of it? What…” Jasper trailed off and shook his head. He didn’t try to say anything else.

“You’re not going anywhere, Jas.” Euan cupped Jasper’s cheek with his hand. “Even if you lose yourself for awhile, you’ll still be here. I’ll be here too, however I can be.” Jasper slowly lifted his head. His eyes were wide and shining and Euan was certain his own were the same. He made himself smile. “There we are. Hi.”

“Hi.” Jasper sniffled. “I think I need a kleenex. And juice. And maybe a good cry. And more juice. And a nap. And maybe something to make my throat less ow. Screaming at bad movies and sobbing aren’t good for sore throats, you know.”

Euan laughed. “Those things are all available.”

Jasper remained _extremely_ reluctant to let go of Euan’s hand. Helping him drink his juice was an awkward tangle of limbs since he refused to let go with more than one hand. That left Euan and Jasper balancing the cup in one hand each. It was probably a good thing that Jasper was stubborn as fuck because it was starting to become obvious that there was no _maybe_ in Jasper’s need for a nap. Half the time Euan was certain he was the only reason Jasper hadn’t spilled his juice all over himself.

Getting Jasper tucked in for that nap when the juice and throat medicine were gone was another adventure and a half. He’d gone back to clinging to Euan with both hands and was determined to stay awake so he wouldn’t have to let go. Euan sat at his bedside holding his hands while Rex tucked Jasper’s blankets around him. Euan felt like he was on the verge of another meltdown and Jasper was already well into a minor crying fit.

“It’s alright, Jasper. It’s alright. You can rest.”

Jasper shook his head. “’s not. You’ll go away if I go t’ sleep.”

“Not far. I’m probably going to crash and have a meltdown in the first bed I find. I’ll only be a shout away if you need me.”

“What if I _can’t_? What if _I_ go away?”

“If you can’t, you can’t. Like I said I’m not going far. The staff can likely figure out what you need or will get Kai, who can get me. If you go away, we’ll be here when you get back or we’ll do our best to find you. You’re afraid and you have every right and reason to be but you’re not alone. We’ll handle problems as they come, like we have every time shit’s blown up in our faces.”

“That… That happened a lot din’t it? Shit blowingall over us I mean. Or blowing shit up. There was lot’s of shit blowing, yeah?”

“And we were damned good at it.”

Jasper smiled. He slowly relaxed, settling into his blankets and loosening his grip. “Will you stay? Just until I’m asleep? Will you stay?”

“Of course, Jas.”

Jasper finally settled completely and let Rex finish bundling him into a snug Jasper blanket burrito. With Jasper relaxed Euan was able to remove one of his hands. Jasper mumbled a sleepy protest until that hand was then used to pet his hair when he decided purring was a better idea.

“Looks like kitten-Jasper’s back.”

“Maow.” Jasper closed his eyes and snuggled closer to Euan’s captive hand. “You’re my brother so that makes you a kitten too.” 

_You’re my brother_. By god Euan did _not_ need to start sobbing right now thank you very much! “By that logic you would be Scottish.”

“Noooooo. You’re just a Scottish kitten.”

And, as usual, the Utterly Ridiculous Award goes to Jasper Fox.

Jasper pressed Euan’s hand against his forehead. “Thank you,” he muttered, his voice trailing off at the end. “I’ma go sleep now.”

“Sleep well, Jas.”

“‘ll try.”

Euan did not cry. He did not cry when Jasper snuggled himself into his blankets. He did not cry when Jasper’s breath evened out in sleep or when his hand finally loosened its grip except for a few twitches in his strained finger muscles. He did not cry when he carefully removed his hand from Jasper’s grasp and took a step away from the bed. 

Euan did not cry when Rex’s arm wrapped around his shoulders and led him from the room. He did not cry when led down the hall and to the crash room. He very determinedly did not cry when they curled up together on the lower bunk of one the room’s cheap bunk beds because Jesse’s sister was crashed facedown on top of the other and he refused to disturb her.

“He called me his brother.” Euan told Rex’s shoulder. “The first time I hear him call his brother since that bloody airport fuckery and he does it to call me a _kitten_.” He was shaking with bottled up hysterics. Whether they were laughter or tears or both was up for grabs. He was in the perfect position to hear the small hitches in Rex’s breath as well.

“Oh just cry you fuckers,” Jesse’s sister said. “’s what I’ve been doin’.”

And as if her voice was a command from on high from God Almighty himself, Euan cried.

He cried with sorrow because Jasper was suffering and frustration because there was so little he could do to help. He cried with rage for Stroud and the department for all they’d done to Jasper, to Rex and his family, and every agent they’d double-dosed. Even the shitheads because nobody deserved this.

He cried with joy because Jasper was alive. Because Jasper was well enough to eat jello and shout at terrible movies and make games with floof penguins. Because Jasper could sit beside him and call him brother, even if it was just this once and could never happen again.

He cried because nearly everyone he cared about was alive and relatively safe. Broken but healing.

For all these reasons and so many, many more.

Euan cried.

 

-Break-

 

Jasper didn’t want to wake up. No, nope, and no. He’d been having a nice dream. He didn’t have a lot of nice dreams. He wanted to keep it. Maybe it was selfish or greedy or something but it was a very nice dream and he wanted to keep it dammit! He was allowed to keep nice things sometimes wasn’t he? Maybe?

It’d been nice okay! He’d watched a movie! It’d been so awful he’d been able to focus on it via continuous ranting!

And Euan had been there.

_Euan had been there_.

**_Euan had been there_ ** and so had Jasper. The evil angry twitch and Stroud’s Voice hadn’t been able to shove him out of his own head and convince him Euan was bad. Euan had been there and so had he and they’d been together and Euan had even helped tuck him into bed and… and…

It was nice okay!

He wanted it back.

He wanted it to be real.

But it wasn’t. It was a dream. (There was no way that that movie had been dreamed up by anything other than his fucked up subconscious. Not at all. Maybe he could dream it up an awful ending. Maybe Indy and What’s-er-Name got married and she wears one of those old lady wedding skirt/suit things. Yeah, and maybe the kid tries to steal Indy’s hat but a gust of perfectly timed wind doesn’t let him. Yeah that was insane enough to work.)

Jasper hugged his pillow tighter. He just wanted to go back to sleep and finish his awful dream-movie with his Euan and Rex. Was that really so much to ask?

“Jasper?”

Apparently so.

A light touch to his shoulder. “C’mon sweetie. We need to get you your evening meds.”

The nurse that called him sweetie was one of his regular better nurses. She wasn’t Nurse Joy but she was better than a lot of other nurses. Even if he couldn’t remember her name right now.

She was right though. He needed his drugs. He needed his stupid drugs to be less dangerous and he needed to be less dangerous if anything like his dream was ever going to happen in the real world. He just…

He wanted his brother back.

Dammit all. Now he was crying again. He didn’t like crying. It made his chest and throat hurt if he did it very long and made his nose runny and he _really_ hated that. Snot sucked in general. Why did it have to be so… snotty? Couldn’t it be something elsey?”

“It’s alright, sweetie. We can get you snuggled up again once we’re done.”

This was actually the point where Kai and Rex and Nurse Joy would snatch the remote for his bed and start raising the back on him when they knew he was just being stubborn. Nurse Who Called Him Sweetie wasn’t as good at knowing when he was being stubborn or having an actual issue though. Her sweet talk would continue until one of three things happened. Either he would comply, he would start screaming and throwing things, or he would out stubborn her and she would summon someone more capable of convincing him to submit or capable of forcing him to.

Jasper didn’t want to play the stubborn game right now. He wanted to have a nice cry that hopefully wouldn’t hurt too much, blow his nose, and then snuggle his blankets until he could sleep more. So he sat up, still hugging his pillow, with a heavy over dramatic sigh just so everyone knew just how displeased he was.

Nurse Who Called Him Sweetie smiled at him and raised the back of the bed for him lean back against. “There we are, dear. You just relax while I get everything ready.”

Jasper flopped back against his raised mattress. She could’ve done that _before_ she made him get up.

He was fine with hugging his pillow and drifting while she got her shit together though. Until she needed to strap his arm down for needles. There would be more needles later, right before they put him to bed properly with a nice sleep aid. Those were the drugs he’d rather sleep through. They were exhausting anyway so the sleep aid probably wasn’t necessary but it put him out faster and helped him sleep through most of the more unpleasant side effects and his heaviest dose of suppressant sludge. It was all ick but it was stupid necessary ick and he could sleep through most of that ick. He couldn’t sleep through pills though.

The nurse softly tapped his arm. She didn’t try to grab it and pull it away like some of the others might’ve. It was nice. He didn’t like it when they just grabbed him and started dragging him around. It was necessary sometimes, he knew that, but they could at least _try_ asking first.

The Nurse Who Called Him Sweetie called him sweetie and asked for his arm. Jasper was Behaving Himself so he gave it to her. He closed his eyes and turned his head the other way for good measure as she strapped down his wrist and started prepping his arm for his needles. He bit down on his pillow and twisted excess pillowcase in his free hand when she set the needle for the iv of suppressant sludge into his arm. Why did most of them have to do that one _first_? Sure it was more time efficient to give him his other drugs while it ran but he couldn’t even manage a cup with one hand let alone take his pills _and_ deal with a cup.

The nurse rubbed his arm to try to help him relax. “You’re doing great, sweetie.”

He was doing _excellent_ thankyouverymuch.

The other needles were easier, if only because they weren’t filled with sludge. Pills were harder, not just because he couldn’t handle anything. His throat decided that swallowing was thing it didn’t want to do. He did manage to get through most of them without choking or drowning himself but that last horse sized pill was no… just no. He spat it back out after failing to swallow it and coughing it back up again. The nurse rubbed his back said her “It’s alright sweetie”s until he finished coughing and could breathe somewhat decently again. Jasper pretended he didn’t want to break something, possibly his own throat. (He was well aware it wasn’t advisable to break his own body parts, thank you! …that didn’t stop him from wanting to… or trying sometimes.)

“It’s alright sweetie. I’ll call in for an injection for this one and we’ll check out your throat.” Jasper nodded. The Nurse Who Called Him Sweetie smiled at him and called in his drug change. He let her do a rudimentary once over of his throat while they waited for the needle.

He wasn’t expecting Kai to be the one bringing it.

Kai gave the needle to the nurse to deal with and distracted Jasper with another throat exam. It was essentially the same exam the nurse gave but Jasper trusted Kai more and was more comfortable tipping his head back and letting him run his fingers along his throat. It was going pretty well. Then Kai started asking questions that he couldn’t answer by shaking his head or shrugging. Like asking him to actually answer out loud when asked if he could talk instead of just nodding.

Damnit.

“Can. Don’t wanna.”

Kai hmmed. “What’s the pain level at?” Jasper tipped his head to the side and shrugged. “Can you elaborate on that, please?”

Fine. “Sore. ’s it.”

“That’s not unexpected considering all the shouting. Can you try to swallow so water for me?” The nurse helped him drink while Kai held his fingers against Jasper’s throat. It was awkward as fuck but he didn’t drown himself and the water was a bit easier to swallow without pills involved.

“What was I shouting at?” He remembered being grumpy about stolen jello but not screamy about it.

“ _Please_ tell me you haven’t forgotten that atrocity of a movie already. I watched that whole damn thing more than once to get the edits sorted out and you lot couldn’t even be bothered to finish the damn thing.”

“That was _real_?” The _fuck_! “We’re talking about the movie where they nuke Indiana Jones right?”

Kai raised an eyebrow. “It was and we are. You thought it wasn’t?”

“I didn’t think anything but my fucked up head could’ve dreamed that up!” But if the movie was real then… thenthenthen…

“Jasper?” At some point while Jasper’s head was spinning Kai’d pulled a stool up to the side of his bed.

He hugged his pillow tighter so he wouldn’t try to grab Kai. “If— if the movie was real… then… then…” He couldn’t finish so he buried his face in his pillow.

There was a soft touch to his arm and another to his cheek, trying to encourage him to look back up. He did turn his head back toward Kai. He looked Very Serious so Jasper went back to his pillow. No Seriousness. Nope and no. Noooo. He was still sleeping. He had to be. It couldn’t’ve been real. He was too fucked up for it to’ve been real. It couldn’t it couldn’t it couldn’t.

“Jasper?” Kai was petting his hair and trying to stop Jasper’s head from spinning but Jasper didn’t want his head to stop spinning. This only made sense if his head was spinning. “Easy there Jas.”

Jasper shook his head. He was just gonna leak into his pillow for awhile. Maybe if he stayed there long enough he would wake up and everything would be back to its normal crazy. It can’t’ve been real. Can’t can’t can’t. Because if he got his hopes up, if he let himself _believe_ even for a moment, he was going to _break_ when it wasn’t real. He would _shatter_ and he didn’t think there would be enough pieces to glue back into something even vaguely Jasper shaped. There was barely enough to do that _now_. He might just smash to dust that could only be vacuumed up and thrown away. (He was constantly surprised he hadn’t been thrown out already.)

His throat was choking on itself. (That never happened in dreams.)

Kai was still petting his hair. (Kai was never there to comfort him in dreams.)

He let the pillow drop so his could use his free hand to wipe his eyes on his stupid hospital smock. (There weren’t ever smocks or pillows in his dreams.)

Jasper lifted his head when his eyes were something close to clear. Kai tipped his head toward the observation window. Jasper’s eyes followed the line of movement and… Euan was there. In the window. Euan was there.

Euan was there and the angry, hating twitch was scratching at the sides of his brain, trying to rile him into frenzy and rage. They hurt, but that’s where they stayed. Maybe they weren’t strong enough to shove him out of his head anymore, or maybe he’d gotten strong enough not to let them. Euan was there and he was smiling, even if it was a little watery on the edges. (That never happened in his dreams. His dreams of Euan were full of rage and hurt and blame and blood and… no.)

Euan was here and it was real and it was real before too. It was real and Euan had held him and tucked him into bed and stayed with him until he slept.

He didn’t realize he wasn’t breathing until a machine was screaming at him and Kai was thumping his back. He coughed up the air he was trying to choke on and managed something resembling proper breathing again.

Now Euan was doing that thing where he was obviously worried but he was trying really hard to pretend everything was perfectly normal. (It’d been a permeant expression during the end of their Turkmenistan adventure. Jasper still didn’t know why and he wasn’t going to find out anytime soon. He couldn’t even hold a pen properly, let alone write with one and sign NDAs.)

Jasper didn’t like that he was the reason Euan was worried, even it Euan worrying about him wasn’t exactly anything new. He did that a lot. Like, a lot a lot. And that was just when Jasper was young and stupid. Now he was young, stupid, and crazy. That was lots of things to worry about. Especially that crazy. Mostly the crazy. The crazy was pretty worrying. (They shouldn’t worry about him. They should just leave him.)

“Jasper? Do you want to try to talk to Euan?”

How was he supposed to say no to that? How the fuck was he supposed to say yes after all he’d done? Could still do? How could he say no? With Euan looking at him like that, how could he say no? Even if it would be safer for the both of them if he did.

“Jasper?”

“Strap my wrist down.” The other was still strapped down for the iv.

“Are you—”

“Strap. Me. Down.”

They did. Kai strapped down his wrist and the nurse did his ankles. They nudged his shoulders back so they could secure those as well and found a pillow to support his neck. Jasper wasn’t really paying attention. He was watching Euan, who was doing that thing where he was coiled up and primed to spring into action the second it was permitted but was trying to pretend he wasn’t. Which was exactly what he did.

The moment Kai waved him to come in, Euan was in the room so fast Jasper could swear he phased straight through the window. He sat on the edge of Jasper’s bed and put his hand on Jasper’s shoulder. “Hi.”

There was only one way to respond to that.

“Are you _stupid_?”

Euan blinked at him. “Huh?”

“I’m nice and strapped down so I can’t hurt you and you go and put your hand in perfect biting distance!” Euan laughed at him, _laughed_ ,and put his other hand against the side of Jasper’s face. “That’s even more perfect biting distance!”

“Do you want to bite me?”

“Nooooo. But that’s prone to changing real quick like.” All that got him was a hair ruffle that he couldn’t even wriggle out of. The cheater.

After that they just… talk. About floof, and jello, and that godawful movie. About how Euan and Rex’d finally, properly, and officially lived together (finally) and about their new apartment. They talked about the fucking weather (not that Jasper had any idea what it was).

(They didn’t talk about the fact that Jasper was strapped to a bed or why. Or what’d caused the burn scar Euan was carefully running his fingers over. They didn’t talk about Kai was sitting on Jasper’s other side and had a syringe full of the strongest, fastest acting sedative he had access to. Or that Rex was ready to pull Euan away from him at a moments notice (if he thought about that too long part of his brain would start screaming that _it was all Rex’s fault_ for taking Euan away from him in the first place, so he didn’t.) They didn’t talk about Mom or how no one could still find her. They didn’t. They didn’t. They didn’t.)

Jasper didn’t know when he stopped being an active participant in their conversation but that was perfectly fine. Even if words weren’t a thing he could do, Euan was here and they were together and they were sorta talking. At some point, while the memory-making part of his brain wasn’t looking, they’d brought him down to half-restraint. This had enabled him to flop over and wrap his arms around his brother’s waist, and Euan was petting his hair and it was perfect. (Actually, that’d probably been a bit alarming when that happened.)

This was good. Holding and being held. Was good. Good good.

There had probably been so, sooooo many kitten jokes that he’d spaced out on. _Pur_ fect.

 

-Break-

 

His brother was a kitten. A content, purring kitten that was flopped over his lap. Euan really needed the bathroom but when one had a happy kitten on one’s lap you did not disturb the kitten. This was the first rule of kitten companionship. Doubly so when the kitten in question was your very ill little brother who you hadn’t been able to hug in fuck knows how long. Hell, he was a happy, Scottish kitten that did not want to be disturbed himself. His bladder could deal.

Euan didn’t know how aware Jasper was of his surroundings. He’d stopped actively participating in the conversation an hour ago but didn’t seem to be in any distress. He only got twitchy if it got too quiet so they kept talking around him as if he was an actual feline kitten sprawled across Euan’s lap. They did their best to include him. Just because he couldn’t or wouldn’t respond didn’t mean he wasn’t listening. 

Unfortunately, doctors had no real qualms about disturbing happy, comfy kittens and were undeterred by the glaring of said kitten’s big brother, especially when the doctor in question was the kitten in question’s doctor and the kitten in question was very ill and needed medicine and proper sleep.

Coaxing Jasper back to full awareness when he was perfectly happy drifting about was a challenge, doubly so because Euan felt so guilty disturbing Jasper’s contentment. Kai and Rex instructed him in the gentle art of Jasper rousing. Say his name, shift him small amounts, and address him directly and repeatedly until he responds. If he doesn’t after a certain amount of time, Kai and the nurse would handle things.

“Jasper, hey.” Euan tried to shift Jasper closer to upright but he just clung tighter.

“Nooooo. Don’t wanna.”

Well, it hadn’t taken much to get him responsive at least. “Nobody’s even asked you to do anything.”

“Doooon’t care. There’s moving. No moving. Only cuddles.”

“C’mon, Jas. Doctor’s orders.”

“Nooo.” Jasper said but he shifted himself a fraction of an inch closer to upright. “Doctors’re mean.”

“Even Kai?”

“‘specially Kai.” Euan raised an eyebrow at Kai who mirrored the expression back at him. Jasper continued without prompting. “Kai goes and makes things Reasonable. Reasonable means thinking. Don’t wanna think. Wanna kitten.”

… He wanted to kitten. _He wanted to kitten_. “I’m pretty sure kittens think, Jas.”

“Shh. You speak of Reason. There shall be no Reason, only Kitten.”

“The kitten needs to take his bedtime medicine and go to bed.”

“Always in bed. Always bedtime. Hey! Nooooooo.” Euan and Rex managed to prod and finagle Jasper upright between them until he was pouting against Euan’s shoulder.

“Are you always this stubborn at bedtime?”

“Always bed. Always bedtime.”

“Sleeptime then. C’mon Jas, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s… Nothing’s wrong. Can we…” Jasper tightened his hold on Euan and Euan did the same in return. “Can we just stay like this? Just a little longer? That won’t mess up any schedules, right?”

Kai shrugged. “It won’t hurt. Ten minutes, then Euan can help get you ready for sleeptime. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds… sounds good.” Jasper looked up at him looking just shy of desperate. “Euan?”

“Sounds great to me.”

Jasper grinned so brightly. He then immediately burrowed himself back into Euan’s side.

It was more than great.

Euan was so happy to just hold his brother. Just a little bit longer. Just a moment more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There has been little progress on The Thing 5. I don't know when/if it's going to get finished.


End file.
